In the development process of mobile communication networks, due to constraints of various conditions, emerging broadband mobile communication networks and conventional networks will coexist for a long time. For example, when a Universal Mobile Telecommunications System (UMTS) network launched by the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) organization develops towards a Long Term Evolution (LTE) network, the UMTS network and the LTE network will coexist for a long time.
A mobile communication network consists of a radio access network (RAN) and a core network (CN). A user equipment (UE) accesses the core network through the radio access network via an air interface. The air interface is closely related to a radio access technology (RAT) used by the mobile communication network. For better description, the mobile communication network corresponding to the radio access technology is hereinafter referred to as a radio network. The UMTS and the LTE are two different radio access technologies, and radio networks corresponding to the UMTS and the LTE are referred to as a UMTS network and an LTE network respectively. A transmission channel that the user equipment establishes on a radio network is referred to as a radio access. One transmission channel is a bearer of the radio access technology, for example, the bearers on the UMTS network and the LTE network are referred to as UMTS bearers and LTE bearers respectively.
In the process of evolution from the UMTS network to the LTE network, the number of users and data traffic on the LTE network increase gradually on the LTE network, while the average user rate is reduced. However, as the number of users and data traffic on the UMTS network are gradually reduced, the spectrum utilization of the UMTS network is reduced. Therefore, in a process of relocation from the UMTS network to the LTE network, spectrum resources on the UMTS network need to be effectively utilized to prevent a decline in the user experience due to overload of the LTE network spectrum in the middle to late period of the relocation.
To prevent the occurrence of the foregoing problems, a method for radio network aggregation transmission is used, that is, multiple radio accesses of one user equipment are aggregated, which ensures that original UMTS resources can be fully utilized and prevents problems such as co-channel interference and adjacent-channel interference between network systems. A method for radio network aggregation includes: introducing a mobile access router (MAR) at a user side, where the mobile access router aggregates different radio access technology links at the user side, for example, UMTS and wireless local area network (WLAN) radio links, and serves to allocate Internet Protocol (IP) packets to each radio link in an uplink direction and provide each terminal user with a data access through a local area network; and introducing a MAR server proxy device at the network side, where the MAR server proxy serves to allocate IP packets to each radio link in a downlink direction.
However, in this solution to radio network aggregation, such function entities as the MAR router and server proxy need to be introduced, which increases system complexity and costs. Another method for radio network aggregation proposed by the 3GPP organization can simplify the structure of the network system. Specifically, at least one routing filter is configured on the user equipment and a Packet Data Network (PDN) gateway respectively, where the configured routing filter includes such features as source/destination IP address, source/destination port number, and protocol type, and is used to match IP packet streams of the same features; the user equipment configures the IP addresses corresponding to each radio access (including a non-3GPP radio access and a 3GPP radio access) as different care-of addresses (CoAs); each radio access passes through the PDN gateway, where each routing filter on the PDN gateway corresponds to a care-of address. In this way, in the downlink direction, the PDN gateway routes IP packet streams matched by the routing filter to a radio network corresponding to the care-of address; similarly, in the uplink direction, the routing filter of the user equipment performs offloading control on the IP packet streams.
The method for radio network aggregation proposed by the 3GPP organization is applicable to the aggregation of non-3GPP and 3GPP radio accesses. In addition, in the process of radio network aggregation, the radio accesses in the uplink and downlink directions are fixed. Therefore, resources of each radio network cannot be utilized properly.